Location

The following controls, located on the Input -> Project Information Page, are used to specify the location of the pavement project on a route in California.

CalME uses the location of the project for the following:

•obtaining the number of lanes of traffic in the direction of the route using the Caltrans Linear Reference System (LRS)

•obtaining traffic counts (AADT, AADTT) from the Caltrans traffic database

•determining an appropriate truck load distribution (WIM station)

•determining an appropriate climate zone from the Caltrans Climate Zone map

The red asterisks (*) indicate that a data item is required.

A pavement project is located on a route by the usual: District-County-Route-Direction, with PM Start and PM End of the start and ending of the pavement project. Postmiles (PM) are fully qualified with prefixes and suffixes. Details on postmiles can be found here.

CalME assists with the selection of the starting and ending PMs for a new project by assigning the project Start to be the PM of the beginning of the route and the project End to be the PM associated with a project length of 1.0 mile, after a selection for Direction is made. Shown below is what you will see when you select Route 101 North, in Del Norte county.

Note: There are some special considerations when entering project location. A segment may be managed by the neighboring district that does not officially cover the county. For example, Route 14 in Kern county between PM 15.0 and 16.0 is managed by District 9 rather than District 6. In this case you will enter the project location using District 9, Kern9 County. Other special counties includes SM5 (San Mateo5), BUT2 (Butte2), LA12 (Los Angeles12), MPA6 (Mariposa6), SLO6 (San Luis Obispo6) and VEN5 (Ventura5).

After you select North for Direction, CalME will generate a Start PM of "M0.000" and a End PM of "R0.967". These PM selections are for the start of Route 101 North in Del Norte county, and the PM associated with a project length of 1.0 miles. The blue text shown below the Start and End PMs shows the length of the project (1.0 miles), the lane miles (2.000) and the average number of lanes for the length of the project (2.00). CalME also assigns a value for the number of lanes (2) at the center point of the project.

You make changes to the default location for your specific project but generating a default project location gets you up-and-running quickly.

CalME automatically selects the PM prefix and PM suffix after you enter the value part of a PM.

CalME will also assist with a manual PM specification, as illustrated below.

If the PM value entered by the user (e.g., 100.000) is not valid, a message in the Error Message Summary text box will be generated.

CalME determines the validity of a PM, and the number of lanes for a project, by using the Caltrans Linear Reference System (LRS). The LRS is updated on a regular basis and CalME uses the latest official release of it.

CalME also makes suggestions for WIM Station and Climate Zone using Caltrans' LRS.

The question mark in the blue circle in the upper-right of the control group allows you to get help on the controls (this topic).